NEW YORK, Jan. 28 (UPI) -- Jessica Molaskey of the Pizzarelli jazz dynasty is making her New York cabaret debut as a solo artist at the Oak Room of the Algonquin Hotel, bringing her special brand of sophistication to a richly varied program of songs titled "Make Believe."
This is also the title of the most recent of three CDs Molaskey has made for PS Classics, albums that have made her a recording star in two brief years. A veteran of more than a dozen Broadway musicals, she has made several recent appearances at Feinstein's at the Regency cabaret club, but only as a guest artist with her husband, John Pizzarelli, the singer and guitarist.
He accompanies her at the Oak Room on the guitar along with his brother, Martin Pizzarelli on bass and Larry Goldings at the piano keyboard. The Pizzarellis are sons of Bucky Pizzarelli, the legendary jazz guitarist who is still active as a musician, and collectively they are known as "The First Family of Cool."
John Pizzarelli joins his wife vocally only once in the Oak Room show, joining in a patter song medley combining Jon Hendricks' "Cloudburst" and Stephen Sondheim's "Getting Married Today" from "Company." Otherwise he remains an accompanist, leaving the spotlight to Molaskey although he has collaborated with her in writing three songs on the program.
These are "How Come You Ain't Got Me?," a witty and delightfully capricious number, "The Girl With His Smile and My Eyes," a lovely ballad that would appear to be Irish in inspiration, and "The Greedy Tadpole," a part of the clever "Seven Deadly Sins" song cycle written by the couple for Audra McDonald. They make a strong impression that bodes well for the future of this unique husband-wife composing team.
Molaskey is a slight woman who wears her brunet hair long and in fashionable disarray and looks hip in a black pants suit with a glittering bodice. Her voice has a bittersweet quality that can strip away the pretense of sweetness or coyness from a romantic classic like Jerome Kern-Oscar Hammerstein II's "Make Believe" from "Show Boat" to reveal its wishful willfulness, and her delivery is always informed by a jazzy resilience.
She opens with a brash rendition of the Cy Coleman-Carolyn Leigh musical come-on, "Hey, Look Me Over" from "Wildcat," followed by piquant, low-key treatment of the Richard Rodgers-Hammerstein lament, "I Cain't Say No" from "Oklahoma!" She is at her best in an unusually reflective and endearing interpretation of Harry Wood's "Red, Red Robin."
Molaskey scores with Peggy Lee's "It's a Good Day" and "Everything is Moving Too Fast," a song full of insinuation garnished with a piano riff, and Irving Berlin's "What'll I Do" and "Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning," an oddball selection complete with all its unfamiliar verses. She also has a hit in a whimsical pairing of the traditional "Morning Has Broken" with Cat Stevens lyrics with her own composition, "I Woke Up One Early Morning."
Molaskey closes her show with Meredith Willson's haunting "Goodnight My Someone" from "The Music Man," and leaves her audience hoping for more.
With a club debut as attractive as this one is, you can be sure she'll be back on the cabaret scene again and again with more original material that may end up in an updated great American songbook.
--
(Please send comments to [email protected].)
